The biggest question when AMD formally launched its Ryzen Mobile platform was all about ‘when’. At the time AMD announced three primary partners and three systems, with the aim that all the units would be available before the holidays. When we spoke to the vendors, only HP seemed to have a closer date than ‘Q1’, with the Envy X360 planned for some time in November. This week it formally went on sale over at hp.com, and it seems to also be available at retail over at Best Buy.

We reported on the unit at launch: the HP Envy x360 with Ryzen Mobile is a 15.6-inch convertible laptop with a 1920x1080 edge-to-edge display, and will feature the AMD Ryzen 5 2500U quad-core SoC. This processor uses four of AMD’s Zen cores, running up to 3.6 GHz, paired with Vega 8 graphics (that’s 8 compute units, so 512 Vega SPs) running up to 1100 MHz with a 15W TDP. It is listed as having 6MB of cache, although this is split between 2 MB of L2 cache, and 4 MB of L3 cache (and the caches are very different in their use).

At Ryzen Mobile launch, it was stated that the Envy x360 would only support 8 GB of DRAM maximum, which to most people was a little odd. Thankfully that is not the case, and HP offers up to 16 GB. HP initially offered the unit with a 4+4 GB DDR4-2400 dual-channel memory configuration, although that seems to have already been sold out, with 12 GB (4+8) and 16 GB (8+8) options left. The base storage option is a 1TB SATA hard drive, although for a premium HP does offer several PCIe NVMe SSD options or combinations therein.

The design uses a full-size island-style backlit keyboard with a numeric keypad, and the unit comes with a 3-cell, 55.8 Wh battery, and Intel 802.11ac wireless connectivity. There is an IR camera for Windows Hello support, a USB-C with DisplayPort and with power capabilities, and HP lists the laptop as able to drive two UHD displays. HP’s partnership with Bang & Olufsen continues, handling the audio duties. It also features a stylus for Windows Ink.

So when this laptop initially went on sale, the base configuration (8GB of memory, 1TB HDD) was being sold with an additional discount for $599 total. Very quickly it seems that the deal ran out, as well as the 8GB memory configuration. Currently, the website offers the 12GB memory configuration, still with the 1TB storage option, but for $805 and shipping set for 11/27. Obviously, this price is not as lucrative as the $599 price, but seems more than reasonable when compared to the Intel version. The Intel version, when not running a brand new $200 discount, features a Core i7-8550U with HD630 graphics, the same DRAM/storage combo, but with a non-IR enabled camera, for $930. It would be interesting to see how they match up in CPU performance, gaming performance, and power consumption.

65 Comments

Microsoft would literally be severely IQ limited if the AMD Ryzen Mobile doesn't get integrated into Surface Tablet.

Apple made Intel and AMD work together to have the necessary graphics power in its portables. Microsoft not going for AMD Ryzen Mobile would be just ignorant about both : its buyers and the rest of the industry.Reply

The issue is that you can't just swap chips and the board is highly customized for that specific tablet. So having Core and Ryzen Mobile designs DOES have some drawbacks. I think it's worth it and I still want to see it as an option... but I wouldn't go so far as to say they're stupid if they don't. I would understand the decision to stick with a single custom board rather than designing and manufacturer two completely different custom boards.Reply

While I'm not over the moon for this particular laptop (too heavy for my tastes, and no 2700U?), I'm really, really excited to see this hitting the market. Now for some premium 13-14" convertible designs. I'd like a ThinkPad one. Listening, Lenovo? ThinkPad Yoga 370 with this APU, or X1 Yoga even. I would pay for it. Gladly.Reply

Agreed, she always seems to be leading from the front. As soon as I saw the picture I instantly realized Lisa Su had just bought a Ryzen Mobile device from a Best Buy... before reading anything. Gave me a good chuckle. Good PR.Reply

He is the major douche that messed up the tablet market by flooding it with low quality, low performing CPUs sold through illegal price dumping campaigns (basically given away for free).

This convinced the majority of the market that tablets are useless, under-performing, productivity-lacking pieces of hardware no matter if the OS is Windows or Android.

So there was an initial wave of buying because of the novelty effect and the affordable prices, but then people were faced with the reality that the devices were useless for anything else than media consumption (and not even that in most cases) .

Now the tablet market is crashing becase people are unwilling to buy tablet anymore AND because there is no compelling powerful platform like AMD Mullings was.

It is incredible that AMD Mullings, despite being 1.5x to 2x faster than Intel Atom, did not even get a SINGLE design win.

This is what happens when an organised crime organization like Intel spends 4 billion USD per year to keep AMD out of the tablet market.